In The End
by Samantha Wealsey
Summary: War struck Peace with a wrath. Severing families- more particularly the ties of five certain Gundam pilots... Now, thirteen years after they sent their children to 'a better place', they find the very place those kids need to be is where they started in
1. Default Chapter

In The End Loki Weasley Part One: I Hate My Job  
  
Summary: War struck Peace with a wrath. Severing families- more particularly the ties of five certain Gundam pilots... Now, thirteen years after they sent their children to 'a better place', they find the very place those kids need to be is where they started in the first place. Funny how things work out...  
  
Loki: Since I obviously just said what's happened there, I'll skip the 'farewell my darling child' mushy crap-o-la and just get on with marking my page in the 'Insanity Anonymous' History Books. So if you don't mind... ::walks away singing BeeGee's::  
  
A tattoo of a golden halo with pure white wings stretched over her shoulder blades, visible with the way her trench-coat was styled. The coat was green, simply, and cut so that the back was cut off until about mid- back, as well as the front but cut so that it was just within 'good taste' and the collar was left on to form some sort of choker with the straps left from the dicing. She had no sleeves, one could assume. Her coat was buttoned down to just below her breasts and then a black belt kept it tight to her body. The rest of the green material fell down to drag the floor about an inch when she wasn't moving and reveal a pair of holey, faded, blue jeans and black boots with neon orange laces. She wore as well a pair of gloves. The first, on her right arm, came up to about the middle of her bicep and was tied on with another belt. It was fingerless, black, and down it had buckles that revealed bits of bare arm. The second on her left arm was simply a commonly seen wrist guard worn by most roller bladers, this one was a shocking purple. Her skin was the color of copper, and her eyes the color of a sky trying to figure out whether it should storm or not. Her hair was brown. Deep brown with stripes of strawberry fitting inside at random places. It was also cut short, so that some of it had to be shaved in the back, and then her bangs were let to hang longer, about to her shoulders, maybe a little longer. She wore tiny, circular, green sunglasses that was more framing then lenses (think Vash the Stampede's glasses) and she wore not make-up. She saw no reasoning to. And, to top off the look: she had braces. The bands were purple and green, if it means any never-no-mind to you. Oh, and her name was Nightingale.  
  
No, not legally. It was more of a nick-name. With rather strange meanings hidden behind it, but hey, it sold so she kept it for more than sentimental reasons. For one: she had always had a bit of a connection with the word. She didn't know why, she just did. For two: she wasn't exactly the World's Most Attractive Teen, what with the normal build (small but muscular) and interesting amount of scars that scattered about her body. For a long time people suspected them to be bullet scars; at least something pertaining to a very dangerous hobby. For three: she could sing. Very well. She sold very well. The people who came to MoonLighter's were quite happy to return for her shows; every night, weekdays five till seven and weekends nine till midnight and whenever she damn well felt like getting up and performing. For four: her 'boss' liked the name so he made it her codename when he found her some three years ago. See, Nightingale's dangerous hobby was to work as a free-lance evil-beater-upper-and-super- heroine. The scars were bits of memories. Each one had a story... Well. All but a few were mock-war-wounds. The war had been subdued maybe ten years ago. Fires lit up often, though. And she was there to help. Not that the Preventers had any idea who she was, where she got her gear, or what she was at all. For all they knew her name was Bruce Wayne, she made her own gadgets, and was a guy in black tights and cape. For all she cared, she was named Bruce Wayne, made her own gadgets, and was a guy in black tights and cape to them. Let them have their own thoughts about whose kicking ass. She'd get her kicks and save a few lives while she was at it.  
  
Where this begins, Nightingale was staring at her pet weasel, which was white with brown markings and named Gizmo- Gizzy for short, and wondering what she was going to do next. She had a mission in a few minutes. As soon as her good friend Mr.-Simulated-Voice-Bug-You-Cuz-It- Gives-My-Old-Self-Kicks Man called and told her the layout. He had learned early on that if he gave her all the information too soon, she'd start the mission the same day, not bothering to wait for the 'go-day'. Sometimes he just took all the fun out of life.  
  
Her phone rang, actually, starting singing 'We Will- We Will- Rock You!' for all it was worth until she picked it up. The answer was a steady stream or 'you-are-to-do-here' which she took in quietly. After a moment, she hung up, grabbed a bag dropped carelessly on the floor some few hours before and left the house. Her current adopted father, Jack, knew well she was quite good at sneaking out and gave up. As long as she came back eventually, he didn't care. The only problem was telling this to the band and listeners of hers that she wasn't around to perform at the moment. People soon got used to it, and come whenever the sign read 'Nightingale Tonight'. People can get used to just about anything. Except onions. And a few other things... But that's another story, thank you very much.  
  
Nightingale reached her destination about a week later. A base that was going to very soon try and take over the world. Nothing really out-of- the-ordinary. At least not to her. The base was disguised as some fancy, expensive hotel holding a 'convention' that weekend and all booked out. Getting in was easy. It was a matter of cunning; it was a matter of deceit... It was matter of getting a job as a waitress. Although she may not be the most beautiful girl in the world, she was attractive- so there!- and getting a job for someone with gods only know how many men roaming around, something's bound to give her the advantage.  
  
Nightingale tugged on her short black skirt again and then cursed the male population. Her uniform was all that just screamed 'I Work For Ecchi Men'; short black skirt, fish-net stockings, shiny high heels, rather loose white shirt, and a tight red vest that only had three buttons on the bottom so any hope of comfort was gracelessly thrown out the nearest window. She glared at the nearest person making her work, being the 'convention' was in full swing, took the tray and walked back out into the crowd. Heads turned. She glared. They turned back.  
  
Table One was the Head Table. Head Honcho's. Nightingale strode up, finding stalking too difficult in high heels and a tight skirt, and starting dishing out whatever it was these people ordered. They ignored her, the 'big men' they were, and kept talking.  
  
"...What's the first plan, then?" asked the skinny man to her left.  
  
"...She's coming next week..." said the man with the stupid hat in front of her.  
  
"...Yuy..." muttered the stocky man to her right.  
  
"...Will the plan work?" asked the first man.  
  
Nightingale put down a greasy plate before the stocky man with no neck. He shoveled it in. She pulled a face and he noticed her for the first time. His eyes grazed her carefully. This- THIS- was the Second-In- Command?! She glanced at the Leader of All and pulled another face. He wasn't much better. Old, going bald- but what hair he had left was pulled into a not-so-flattering ponytail- and an ugly uniform (she started to appreciate hers) and hat. The Second-In-Command smiled just as greasily as his food. He nudged his Leader. "Pretty cute, huh?" he asked.  
  
Nightingale tried very hard to take this as a compliment.  
  
The Leader agreed. He smiled at her. She smiled back, faking the whole 'yeah-I-dig-you-too' look. The whole 'You've-got-money' kinda look, 'That's-why-you're-so-hot-right-now'. The Leader pulled her into his lap. She tried to play hard to get (VERY HARD). He pulled her back down before she could move and breathed into her ear. "When do you get off?"  
  
Opportunity always seems to knock just when you don't want it... Nightingale hissed to herself. She smiled wider, as if enjoying the idea. "In about an hour..." she purred, to sell the whole deal, and leaned into him. She really hated her job sometimes. This guy was, like, fifty! And hitting on HER, a sixteen-year-old! "What do you have in mind...?"  
  
"Wine in my room... One-Twenty-Four... You know where that is?" he asked.  
  
"I can find it." IhatemyjobIhatemyjobIhatemyjob-He's so dead, my boss!!  
  
"Good. See you in an hour..." he trailed, waiting for a name...  
  
Uhhhhh... "Kat." was the first name to come to her head. But he took it. For an ecchi name, at least. But he took it. He let her go and she stalked back to the kitchens. She REALLY hated her job just about now... But couldn't make a call to her boss to tell him off because that would be tracked. She'd have to wait until after her mission. She REALLY hated her job sometimes...  
  
Infiltration sucked.  
  
An hour later, 'Kat', walked up to 142 and knocked. She glanced at the "Please, do not disturb" sign and rolled her eyes in disgust. The old man hadn't changed from his uniform like she had, preferring her jeans and coat over that- that- THING any day. He led her into his room where a small table was set up with wine and other things. Nightingale wondered why this guy wasn't as big as his Second.  
  
"Tell me about you, Kat." the Leader said while he poured wine, more for her than for him, and tried to act casual. He didn't want wine, she could tell, but wanted to get her good and drunk first. Men.  
  
"Well..." Nightingale crossed her legs and chewed on a cracker instead of drinking, it had been a while since she got to eat, and thought up a good lie. "I live alone..." she smiled. The more she sounded like a slut the better. Maybe then she could get him to talk... "I don't usually do this kinda thing- waitressing, and all... I work at a few gentlemen's clubs from time to time... But I got fired."  
  
"Why?" Ecchi.  
  
"Too many men wanted me. Took all the attention from the other girls..." Nightingale purred, giving him a good, 'come-get-me' look, and uncrossing her legs.  
  
"You were that good a dancer, then?"  
  
"However they liked it... What about you... Surely someone like you leads an interesting life... Making up such skilled, careful plans and such..."  
  
He grinned as his ego inflated more than Nightingale would have wished. Idiot. "I would suppose... But once we get control over the Former Queen of the World it'll all be easy..." His hand laid itself on her knee. She tried not to retch.  
  
"How... I mean, she's got such tough security. Designed by a Gundam Pilot, they say." She tasted the wine. She hated wine. Nightingale pretended to drink.  
  
"Gotta man on the... inside at Sanc... Good man, Jacobs, really..." he muttered, starting now to kiss her hand. That was all she wanted.  
  
"Wait wait wait..." she said gently, and he looked up. She grinned. "You might want to know something first..."  
  
"Yes, m'dear?"  
  
"I think you're a disgusting old man!" she kicked up, being he was leaning over her legs, and caught his chest nicely. He fell back into his chair. She whipped out her gun from her back pocket. "And I am going to kill you now... Ta..." She fired.  
  
Infiltration sucked... But sometimes it had its perks. The gun shot was bound to be heard. Which meant now she got to play hide-and-go-seek with other men. She jumped out the window and dropped the two stories to the ground. Escaping into the forest was easy. Keeping running and circling around to get to her motorcycle was the hard job. But she escaped with only minimal injury and little retaliation. Stupid people really, now she could see why they wanted to fight.  
  
Nightingale fell back onto her bed, sighing. She thought a moment... Jacobs... The Inside Man was named Jacobs... Which meant she had to get to Sanc... Okay then.  
  
She played one show before heading out, needing to hack into Preventer files before doing anything. This Jacobs man wasn't exactly going to announce himself to her. The day and a half it took to gain access to the Sanc files annoyed her. There was normally not a system she couldn't tap into outside an hour. Whoever designed this was way too good. That deflated the girl's ego a smidge.  
  
Nightingale stared up at the castle in the distance. Getting into Sanc was easy, sure. Sanc was the tourist attraction of the millennia. Disney World didn't get out-of-towners this good and they were older than the monarchy. Nearly anyone could get into Sanc if they could hide weaponry well enough. And her good friend Mr.-Screw-With-Head was good at that kind of thing. The sun was setting.  
  
Infiltration sucked.  
  
She ruled that out. Spy work, crawling through air shafts- THAT was the way to go! Nightingale headed towards the castle. She couldn't stop for much. After all, that Jacobs guy could have heard about his Leader dying by now. And then what? Would he go ahead with the plan? Or just go the easy route and kill the Vice Foreign Minister? There was no room for taking unnecessary risks. So, ruling out all the boring paths, Nightingale just said 'hell with it' and went for the insanely entertaining direct route. Humming was fun.  
  
Nightingale hummed to herself quietly while she skulked past camera's without worry, pretending to be part of the tour group. They were taking the tour of the lower level of the castle, listening to the history. Well, everyone ELSE was listening, Nightingale was humming the melody to 'Rhythm Nation' by Janet Jackson and reading name tags of any Preventer who happened to walk by. The tour was coming to the peak, the middle, where getting where she wanted to go would be easy... Now... How to find this Jacobs character...  
  
Research said only one male Jacobs working in the facility. One of the men down in interrogation... Nightingale stopped humming, finally realizing what she was going to do. Plans were so boring sometimes. Improvising was the way to go. She ducked into a room while the crowd pressed by, finding it to just be an empty hall. Video cameras hadn't spotted her. No... They couldn't find her until later. A little later when they'd want to interrogate her, not just tell her she was going to wrong way.  
  
Some twenty minutes later, after passing no-one in the hall and taking a few strange turns, Nightingale let herself be sighted on the third floor. Somewhere near the personal quarters of the Foreign Minister. Within seconds, a Chinese man was standing beside her, gun ready. "Efficient." Nightingale muttered approvingly. "Whoever designed this is good." She smiled and he only seemed to glower.  
  
His name tag read Cheng. He wore the green uniform, carried the licensed gun given to them all. He also carried a bit of an attitude. "Who do you think you are?" he demanded shortly. "A Lady and a Warrior." Nightingale bowed deeply, with much flourish. That didn't help the situation, she knew, but it was fun all the same. "Here to see the sights."  
  
Without answering, Cheng put her in hand cuffs and lead her to interrogation. Nightingale didn't resist. It was where she wanted to go, anyway. She simply strode in front of this Cheng guy, while he muttered curses under his breath, and smirked at anyone who stopped to stare.  
  
Interrogation halls were cold. There was probably a reason. But she couldn't care.  
  
There were four people besides herself and her new friend. The name tags read Marquis, Barton, and Jacobs. A woman and two men. All three were staring at Nightingale.  
  
"Who's this, Wufei, new friend?" asked the woman with a sly smile.  
  
Cheng snorted. "This onna was on the third floor."  
  
"Took you that long to see her?" Barton asked in a rather subdued voice.  
  
Again Cheng snorted. This time in a more 'shut-up...' kinda way...  
  
"What's your name?" Marquis asked seriously.  
  
"I'm the Artist Commonly Known as Nightingale." replied the girl. Her reddish-brown hair slipped a bit over her eye. She flipped it out of the way. She grinned too, just to add to the effect.  
  
"What were you doing upstairs? You entered with the tour group, didn't you?" Cheng demanded from behind. His grip went rough.  
  
"Easy, buddy, easy. I only got one right arm per life, 'kay?" Nightingale said over her shoulder. The grip tightened again in response, then calmed. She turned back to the group. "Did you know that a group calling themselves Seraphim was trying to take over the colonies?" she cocked her head to the left in an innocently curious sort of way. The two called Barton and Marquis looked suspiciously curious. Jacobs seemed to internally flinch. She grinned. "Did you know that I killed their leader not too long ago in order to prevent the old hentai from going ahead with his plans to capture Relina Yuy? AND that there's an inside man in this building as we speak?" She tensed as Jacobs' hand inched for his gun. Before any of the other three Preventers could ask another question, the girl broke from Cheng's grasp and karate-kicked Jacobs into the nearest wall. A second jump brought her hands from behind her to in front of her. "And did you know that that's him?" she asked, watching Jacobs as he lay sprawled and dazed on the floor. The other Preventers had their guns out and pointed at her. She had her own, which was nicely hidden in her coat, pointed at Jacobs. "Just go ahead and ask. Can call my boss too, he'd tell you all the information I collected on my last mission- to the convention where the Seraphim-echhi-men tried to converse on how to take over the Colonies..."  
  
The Preventers took this in stride. First they locked her up, then Jacobs was taken to interrogation, and she was left alone. Nightingale passed the time by picking the locks to her cuffs and twiddling her thumbs. They had taken her gun. And her other gun... And her other gun... And her clips... And her knife... And her sai... And the other sai to form a matching set. After finally being sure she wasn't armed they left. All she had to her was her cell phone.  
  
Another man came in the free interrogation room this time. In a symbol of cooperation, Nightingale tossed back the cuffs, crossed her legs, and folded her hands around her knee, smirking at him. THIS was the Big Guy- man, she was good! His tag read Yuy. And his friend's read Maxwell. The two men, along with the reappearing Cheng and Barton, stared at her. Nightingale took out her cell phone and held in while Yuy finally decided to talk.  
  
"You were found with considerable weaponry on-hand... Nightingale..." he paused. "Excuse me if I don't take that as an offering of peace and non- violence..." he took a seat in a chair across from her. "Prove me wrong, if you want to get out of here and go back to being a normal teenager. This isn't the life for someone so young."  
  
"Ah, but it's the drive, Yuy!" Nightingale pressed the speed dial while she talked; he looked curiously, trying to see through the shiny metal table at what she was doing. She slid the sparkly purple phone across the table and he stopped it. A voice on speaker came from it.  
  
"My dear Nightingale, what do you have to sing about today?" Mr.-Boss asked. The men stared at the phone.  
  
"Well, boss, I've killed the leader of Seraphim, as I told you, and escaped, and got to Sanc, and got in... and then got myself caught... Brought to Jacobs... Told my new friends the Preventers about what I've been up to these past few days and now they want proof I'm not trying to woolly them." She smiled as the Preventers looked bewildered.  
  
"It's so good to hear you've finally made a few friends. Tell me, what are they're names?"  
  
"Yuy, Maxwell, Cheng, and Barton, according to those nifty tags they wear." She paused. "I want one- why don't I get one?" He ignored that, her boss. The men, however, looked at her funny.  
  
"Then may I announce, men, the teenager who's been assisting you without notice. She goes by Nightingale, yes, but her birth name would be Aubrie Yuy..." Even Nightingale didn't expect that.  
  
Yuy was staring at her even more wide-eyed than the rest. "Aubrie..."  
  
"Waitwait-WAIT!" Nightingale waved her arms in confusion as she finally processed what her boss had said. "Yuy? Since when was I a Yuy? A Jefferson, yes; Mathers, yes; Masters, yes- but YUY?! When in Hell-"  
  
"Ever since you were born, my dear..." The voice, which normally sounded like a bad computer simulation, changed. Now it was real. Now it was an old man. Now she had no idea what was going on.  
  
"J..." Yuy muttered. "J- What the HELL is going ON!?" he flew to his feet, glaring at an imaginary man standing on the phone. "You're a sick old man, you know that?!"  
  
"I may be a sick old man, Heero, but I kid you not. This... kid... is your own. I've been tracking her after all files were destroyed thirteen years ago." the voice replied. It sounded way too amused for Nightingale to overlook.  
  
"You've- what?! WHAT! You think... That I'm the daughter... of the Queen of the World...?"  
  
"No, I know you are the daughter of the Queen of the World. It is why I sent you on this particular mission."  
  
Nightingale stared at the phone a moment, and then started laughing hysterically. Her mirth was so hysterical that she fell out of her seat, lying on the floor laughing, clutching her sides. "You-have-GOT-to-be- kidding-me!!"  
  
Yuy just sort of stared. He sat down slowly. "That laugh..." Nightingale heard him mutter as she finally regained some composure. She lay on the floor staring at the ceiling. Every once and a while she shook with giggles.  
  
"You should believe me, Aubrie. After all, I never would have approached you before with my offer to fight. I wouldn't have cared. Wouldn't have recruited a fighter. But of course, you are Heero Yuy's child. You are his genetics- therefore- the best. The daughter of the Perfect Soldier and the Queen of the World."  
  
"You're a sick man, J..." Yuy muttered.  
  
"Not going to lock her up now, are you?" Silence. "Mission accomplished, then, on my part."  
  
"What choice do we have? With a vouch like that..." Maxwell muttered finally as Nightingale pulled herself up to her knees to stare at the phone in amazement.  
  
"Omae wa korosu- whatwasit?- J!" Aubrie hissed.  
  
"Gee, that doesn't just prove it all, noooo." Maxwell smirked. "Well, Hee-man. We needed help and it seems we've found it. You might want to break the news to Relina, though, she might faint or something and need her assassin nearby." he clapped Yuy on the shoulder and lead Barton and Cheng out of the room.  
  
Yuy said something along the same lines Aubrie had said to J to Maxwell. J had hung up. Heero Yuy was staring into Aubrie's eyes. "I find this hard to swallow..." Aubrie muttered. To her amazement, he nodded in agreement. "So uhhhhhh... now what?" she asked.  
  
"J wouldn't lie about something like that. I know him too well to think he would." Yuy muttered, standing. "Follow me, Aubrie." he said in the same sort of 'I-can't-believe-I'm-actually-doing-this' kind of voice.  
  
Aubrie followed obediently. What else could she do? She was just told who her birthparents were. And they weren't exactly who she even PLANNED them to be. Maybe a few middle-class people, stupid teenagers who couldn't handle a child at the moment- but the two most important people to the peace? Her mind flew in several hundred directions as she attempted idly to sort all this out. J did have a point; why else would he choose her other than if she were the child of some wonderful soldier? She wasn't exactly fighting or anything before he found her. In fact, she was simply trying to stay alive when he came to her through a purple cell phone (which she forgot in the interrogation room) that seemed to come from nowhere. Not only did interrogation sucked, J sucked too. And so did a lot of other things, but J was the suckiest of the sucky at the moment.  
  
Yuy lead her into a large room, apparently he had come from here originally because a woman in a chair, who was reading a book, looked up. "Where'd you disappear to?" she asked in a teasing voice. It was Relina Yuy. She glanced at Aubrie. "Who's this?"  
  
"Aubrie." was all Yuy seemed to be able to articulate. He also looked like he had a good case of lockjaw.  
  
"Au-" she stared at Aubrie now, eyes huge, and dropped her book. She somehow got to her feet and walked zombie-like to Aubrie and held her hands some inch from her face, as if scared to touch her. Like she'd disappear if she was touched. "A-aubrie- OUR Aubrie?"  
  
"J wouldn't lie about something like that..." Yuy muttered.  
  
Maxwell was right. Relina Yuy DID faint. Aubrie had to catch as she fell forward, and was relieved by Yuy, who took the woman and lay her down. He slid into a seat and stared at the floor, hands tangled in his untamable mane of brown hair. The same brown as her own...  
  
J sucked.  
  
Aubrie stared at the floor herself. "I'll admit I never saw that coming..." she laughed once and stopped. "J threw me for a bit of a loop there- so- exactly... uh... WHY am I just finding this out... I mean... I'm YOUR daughter right..."  
  
"A war broke out when you were a child. The Gundam pilots had to send their children in secret into the world to keep them alive... Assassins would have killed you all if it had not been for that..." Heero Yuy's voice was a bit monotonous as he spoke. "J was tracking you without anyone knowing... How is he even still alive...?" That was more to himself than her.  
  
Aubrie had a sudden vision of a boy with red hair. And heard a name.  
  
"Tris." she muttered without realizing. She stared. "Tris... What? Who on earth is Tris?" she asked no one in particular.  
  
This, however, seemed to disconfirm all of Heero's doubts. "Your best friend before you left..." he stood. "And you couldn't say Tristan-"  
  
"So... I said... Oh man, it's true! That old geezer wasn't lyin'!" Aubrie flew to her feet. "This is messed up, man..." She shook her head. Then it flew up, meeting strangely hurt eyes. "Not that I'm... dissin'...ah ha... or anything... uh... It's just weird... Uhm... Dad...?" she trailed off. He smiled. It was rather reassuring in a 'this-is-SO- beyond-weird' kind of way. She giggled nervously. "What about... uh... what about her?" she pointed to her mother, who was still unconscious on the couch. But being acknowledged seemed to wake her anyway, and Relina Yuy's eyes fluttered open. She stared a moment. Aubrie took this into her own hands, a wave of silliness overcoming the whole fact that this was the most screwed up situation she had ever been in but- HEY! These were her ACTUAL, REAL LIFE parents! Not some foster family unable to put up with her, but her parents! "Hi, Ma, what's up?" she asked with a huge grin.  
  
Relina Yuy screamed, sort of, and flew off the couch and onto the floor over the side.  
  
This made Aubrie start laughing straight out.  
  
Relina stared. "He-heero! What's going on...?"  
  
"That's Aubrie. Like I said. J led her back. And just in time. We could use the help..." Heero helped Relina to her feet while Aubrie giggled over the situation.  
  
"Screwed up as all Hell, but hey, ya take what Fate gives yeh." she said simply. "But... But, Aubrie was... Her hair... She didn't... WHY do you dress like that..." Relina stuttered out.  
  
Aubrie lifted her arms and stared at her clothes. She shrugged. "I dunno... I just like it..." she shrugged again then peered at Relina. "Why...?"  
  
"It's just- Aubrie- You- wore- But..."  
  
"No offense, but can you speak WHOLE sentences? That's confusing..." Aubrie said with a frown. Her eyes betraying with a smirk.  
  
"But- It's just- The Aubrie I remember- she wore cute-" ("Cute," Aubrie snorted.) "-dresses and wore a little crucifix and... And..." Relina sunk onto the couch, hands now tangled in her hair, much like her husband's had once been.  
  
"Okay, lady, let's put it this way:" Aubrie ticked off with her fingers. "I don't do cute. I don't do frilly. I'm not gonna walk around with some crucifix when I'm a witch-" (Relina looked horrified.) "A white witch, thank you, but not along the lines of peace with the Almighty Mono- God followers." Aubrie narrowed her eyes at how amazed Relina was at this. "And if you can't handle it... well... Too bad. I change for nobody but myself. I'm a soldier first and lady last." She waved her index finger as Relina sputtered. "That's just the way the world works outside this place, Ma." she folded her arms. Then muttered. "Of course, harm none, do what thou wilt... Well I'm not a sinner, no, not at all... Well... I never exactly used a spell on them... Hn..." she stared at the ceiling sorting out her thoughts while Relina stared at her. "I'll have to purify myself or something... later o- Wait a minute- what about Jack?"  
  
"Jack?" her parents echoed.  
  
"My cu- uh... my foster father. What about him? I mean, he's used to me disappearing an' all- but ya know he's rather attached to me and would wonder if I was gone too long... The longest I've ever disappeared is two months... And Jack's the best-" she froze, glancing the two over. "I can't just leave forever without telling him, can I?" She flopped down on the floor, legs crossed, intentionally not sitting on the chair nearby. She bit her lip. Of all her foster fathers, Jack was the best, now she was going to have to leave...  
  
Finding her family sucked- No! J sucked! This was his fault! Aubrie narrowed her eyes into a look that not even Heero himself could master. "Omae wa korosu, J..." she muttered. Her father's- that was so weird! Her father's- voice jarred her back into reality.  
  
"It could be arranged, Aubrie, that you return to him and sort this out before returning for training. Explain to him that you've... well... whatever you see fit to tell him." he said gently, sitting next to his wife and gazing at her.  
  
"When?" Aubrie said a little too quickly. The two looked slightly disturbed. Then they looked thoughtful.  
  
"As soon as you want. You cannot spend two months there, however, and I think you could understand why. After all, you yourself informed us upon the situation at hand, Aubrie..." Heero looked away from Aubrie when this thought struck him. She was a soldier. "You are needed here as well." A soldier... Like him.  
  
Aubrie nodded. "J wanted me to do something... A mission he told me about before I left for Sanc... I might as well do that first...." she muttered, standing, wanting to leave. "What kind of mission?"  
  
"Information mission. The fun kind." Aubrie grinned. "Break in, grab the info, and get out. The one's that take more improvising than planning on my part." She folded her arms behind her head. Then turned and started walking away. "I'm not used to asking permission. Get used to it." she called over her shoulder as she disappeared.  
  
Heero turned to Relina, who still looked shocked. She'd get used to it, he decided.  
  
Loki: Wow, this was long. Any-way. What did you think? Review!! ::skips away singing Ordinary Day:: 


	2. Exactly What Did I Do To Derserve This?

In The End Loki Weasley Part Two: Exactly What Did I Do To Deserve This?  
  
Summary: War struck Peace with a wrath. Severing families- more particularly the ties of five certain Gundam pilots... Now, thirteen years after they sent their children to 'a better place', they find the very place those kids need to be is where they started in the first place. Funny how things work out...  
  
Loki: Lookie my shirt!! ::points at shirt reading 'I see squirrels'::  
  
His parents wouldn't let him get a tattoo. Sometimes parents whomped. So he settled for dog collars with spikes. Those were fun. School systems whomped. They wouldn't let him wear his fave clothes to school because they were 'suggestively violent'. Just because a guy likes the color black for the oddest reasons doesn't make him violent. Just because he gave his brother a black eyes doesn't make him violent. Mark SO ran right into his fist. He wasn't aiming for his eye, the kid ran right into it. All he was trying to do was get the runt to stop bothering him and he swung around and the little twerp THREW himself into his fist... It wasn't HIS fault! Anyway, he liked to wear baggy black jeans and this tight black shirt with safety pins (SEE! Safety!) up and down the sleeves and maybe a black hoodie with a killer dragon on it. Killer as in way cool, not dangerous, thank you very much. And maybe some BDU boots that go 'clunk clunk clunk'. That was one of the coolest things in the world to do: walk around in half-laced boots going 'clunk clunk clunk'... His hair wasn't black, much to his annoyance, but this blue color. His parents wouldn't let him dye it black, dern them. They don't let him do anything... It was short, anyway, and stood in any which way. And trust me; his hair didn't naturally stand like that. That kind of do took work beyond work. One does not realize how long it takes one to make hair look so messy. His skin was pale, he was American, after all, and his eyes purple. Girls loved that.  
  
Girls loved his eyes. And he loved the fact girl's loved that.  
  
Oh, by the way, his name was Milo. Well, Miles, if you were to go by specifics. But he liked Milo. Miles sounded so... so... nerdy. Like he was a geek. Which he was, a computer geek, but still. Reputation was a big thing in his school and he had a lot to protect. It's not east living where he did. People were murder on reputations. You could go from popular to the World's Dorkiest Dork in two seconds flat. All it took was a sentence. Someone to say something. Milo learned early on when to keep his big mouth shut.  
  
Milo had no dangerous hobbies, unless you count listening to groups like the Supremes and R.E.M., but did enjoy the frequent Star Fighter Game and other such blew-em-up-style games that still circuited the market. Mech Warrior was his favorite. He was the best. The best of the Best.  
  
He was... What in the name of Flying Monkeys? Milo stared at his bed sheets, which were artfully tangled around him like a cocoon. He stared at the laptop just laying there. Since when did he have a laptop? Since when was his room clean? Milo stared bleary-eyed around his room, which was usually in the perfect state that looked like something nuclear went off... but now... now... it was clean. His carpet was blue- you learn something new everyday- and since when did he have a desk!? Milo strained his mind... Oh yeah... Since he was five.... Being he was fifteen and nearly eleven months, that was saying something. He could actually remember back some ten years! Woo-HOO!!  
  
Milo turned his mind back to laptop, still irked about the state of his room, and flipped up the top. It immediately booted, like all this was planned. Not at all suspicious, assuming his parents had gone completely mental, he watched. The screen's background was a picture of a still shot of the Gundams. It was way cool. They were all in poses, edited together, from some of their better battles caught on media camera. A video popped up out of nowhere. An old man, a disturbing looking old man, made out of pixels was staring at him. Something nuclear went off on his head and the mushroom cloud was still there. And he wore those coats doctors wear. It was waving a finger at him, this little pixilated thing-a-ma-bob. "Ah ah ah..." it chanted. "That's dangerous. What if this blew up?" he asked.  
  
"Yeah, what if it did?" Milo muttered, rubbing his eyes. He didn't expect an answer. "Then your parents would be quite depressed. After all, being the child of whom you happen to be, to find their son was stupid enough to not check a suspicious artifact before activating it... Well... Let's say 02 would be quite disappointed in his son..." the figure seemed to smile sadistically  
  
Milo stared.  
  
"I'm hallucinating... And what do you mean 02?" Milo snapped at the pixel person. Not truly realizing he was actually talking to some computer generated weirdo...  
  
"You are not hallucinating, child, and all will be explained in due time. I wish to ask something of you. Do you know where the warehouses are by the pier? Abandoned, warehouses?"  
  
"Yeah.... Why..." Milo asked suspiciously, slowly.  
  
"I want you to do something for me... Play a little game, if you will." replied the ugly old figure.  
  
"A... game?" Milo asked quite doubtfully. "Are you serious, or just stupid?"  
  
"Quite serious, my friend. Now, what I want you to do is to go to the third warehouse from the North this afternoon... Around noon. Wait there. Inside. Someone will show and explain all of the rules to you, trust me." It smiled at him. "I assure you, you will not regret this if you do, Miles." It continued.  
  
Milo needed his head checked.  
  
"Oh-kay.... goodbye." Milo had had enough. He slammed the cover shut and got out of bed.  
  
The day dragged by. And it was the weekend, so it shouldn't have been dragging like this. It should have just flown by with all the boarding he did with his friends. But someone that evil pixel doctor kept lingering into his head. Maybe he should check it out....  
  
You know, for... manly reasons.  
  
Wouldn't want whoever made that thing to think him a wuss for being a no-show.  
  
Yeah. He'd go.  
  
Milo finally got a chance to ditch his friends around one and made a beeline for the third warehouse to the north.  
  
The warehouse was, for lack of a better word, abandoned. It smelled like bird and dust. That was about all. Except the lack of windows thereof due to... some.... people... that.... he knew- ahem...  
  
But otherwise it was a perfectly desolate warehouse- ooh, big word...  
  
The floors creaked, and he was afraid of falling.... uhm.... let's just call them 'unidentified falling objects'....  
  
Milo coughed up dust as again the floor creaked and something came from below his feet. It sounded like... no, it was gone. He couldn't identify it.  
  
The floor creaked and groaned again. Milo stood in the center of the warehouse, bored. He put his hands behind his head and sighed. "When is this guy gunnaaaa.... uhhhhh...?" Milo stared at his feet. The floors were groaning in a really not good way...  
  
Why did he have this sudden... oh, I dunno.... sinking.... feeling?  
  
The ground beneath Milo gave way and he found himself plummeting... wait- ten feet? Who on Earth would dig a tunnel under a warehouse!?... Oh. Milo had fallen on his face, and turned over on his back and sat up slowly. The fall was very painful, thank you very much.  
  
About twenty guns were pointed at him right at this moment. Well, him and this girl in weird clothes. But she didn't seem to notice. She was scrambling to grab something behind him. Milo had a bit of a hard time taking his eyes off of those guns...  
  
Gunfire! From behind!  
  
Milo fell back and rolled onto his stomach. The girl was shooting a.a.a- something that obviously shot a lot of rounds- at the guys with guns. They had scattered back into another hall. The girl now stood up. "Get up!" she ordered Milo.  
  
Didn't have to tell him twice.  
  
Heart going like nuts, Miles stumbled to his feet and behind the girl with the gun. She pulled something from her long green coat and lobbed it at the hall. Then turned, grabbed his arm, and ran in the opposite direction.  
  
Something went boom behind them...  
  
"Damndamndamndamndamn!!" she hissed as she pulled him down the hall, right, down another hall, left, straight, and finally stopped, counting her steps carefully. "Ah ha!" she grinned, yanked him waaayyy too close than most girls would like a guy they first met, and pointed the gun at the floor. "Express elalator go doooooown..." she said in a child-like voice and shot a circle around them.  
  
Once again, the ground made a sickening sound and gave out.  
  
But this time Milo acknowledged this in time to scream as he went down... down... down...  
  
Landing was hard. And metal. Milo lifted his head from the floor, which was now probably imprinted with the image of whatever the floor was, and stared around. "Holy Flying Monkeys!"  
  
"Holy- wait- what?" the girl asked, staring at him. She had rolled to her feet.  
  
A guard railing! They were on a catwalk! She had shot them through the floor and into a hanger and landed on a three-foot-wide catwalk! HOLY FLYING MONKEYS!! He could have just plummeted to his doom!! And the girl was standing up, calm as anything, and dusting her trench coat off! WHAT THE HELL!?  
  
"What- but- how- when- since- wha- wait- but..." he stuttered, stumbling to his feet. She stared at him with blue eyes behind green sunglasses. She smirked.  
  
She gave him a V-for-Victory sign. "You're in luck- thought it was really five steps that way!" she pointed some five feet off to the left of the walk and well over dead air. Milo could have fainted. "Wha...."  
  
"Uh oh...." She was staring up, this nut job of a female.  
  
Milo took it upon himself to assume what she was staring and just run like cheetah. With his luck the guns had finally caught up and were now preparing to A: shoot, or B: jump down and THEN shoot.  
  
Clang!  
  
B.  
  
The girl was just behind him now, running. "Ha ha haaaa.... COME GET ME!!" Out of the corner of his eye, Milo saw the girl sticking her tongue out at the men with guns.  
  
"ARE YOU CRAZY OR JUST SUICIDAL!?" he roared at her. She was taunting those men and now they were shooting at them! Milo ran faster. If he lived through this, he would never (NEVER!!!) disobey his parents again, never lie, and never do anything bad! Please, please, please, let him live through this... HEY THE PIXELMAN!! This was HIS fault!! HE told him to come here!  
  
Milo ran faster. More clangs. Then this really weird sound... Like... Like metal stretching... Creeeeeak...  
  
"Uh oh..." again said the girl.  
  
The catwalk gave out on the side opposite where the two were heading. Milo heard soldiers yelling and then found himself running on thin air. He had barely grabbed hold of the railing when he went Tarzan-like down... down.... down.... The girl wasn't so lucky, he noticed her slip and start sliding down the angling metal floor as it fell down... down... down... on one side...SLAM!! Clinging for dear life, Milo found himself dangling some five feet from the landing he had been aiming for and staring down at the collection of gunmen and the crazy girl, who was swinging around some ten feet below him.  
  
"I LOVE my job! WOO!" the girl cried, climbing up at Milo at record speed. "Climb, dude, before they figure out what to do." she ordered as she past by him.  
  
After a moment of confusion, Miles jerked himself back into reality and started climbing. Just as he stood on the landing, guns started going off and a red light started flashing. An alarm was going off.  
  
"What're you doin' here?" asked the girl, giving him a doubtful look. She didn't seem to notice the sirens or the lights or the guns, for that matter. She put her hands on her hips and stared at him.  
  
"I'll let you know when I find out..." Milo muttered. "Can we just get out of here before I get shot to Swiss cheese, please?" he continued. "You seem to know what you're doing..."  
  
"Infiltration." the girl smirked. "The blunt kind." She turned. "Follow me, kid."  
  
"I'm not a kid." Milo shot back and chased after her.  
  
The girl giggled. "Swiss cheese. heh heh heh.."  
  
The route out was completely void of people. Why, Milo didn't know. And he was quite grateful for it, too. It meant he wasn't going to die. The girl led him out into the daylight, some five miles from the warehouse, and turned to him after shutting a trap door. She shouldered her gun, which she had been carrying ever since Milo first saw her, and nudged her sunglasses back up her nose.  
  
"So why were you there?" she asked curiously.  
  
"I... Well..." Boy, when you think about it, the reason he was there was REALLY stupid... "I found this... computer... and some cartoon-guy... he told me to go... to that warehouse... and wait. Someone would show and tell me why..."  
  
Instead of laughing, the girl raised an eyebrow, twisting her mouth in an unreadable kind of look. "The cartoon... What'd he look like?"  
  
"A doctor."  
  
"Do you still have that computer?" she continued, still looking like she had an idea as to what was going on.  
  
"Yeah. It's right here..." he gestured to his book bag and the girl took it without asking. She sat on the grass of the woods and flipped up the top. The screen lit up and the pixel-man waved at her. Milo leaned over her shoulder, watching.  
  
She pulled a purple cell phone from inside her trench coat and pressed a speed-dial number.  
  
"J......" she said in a warning voice. It was rather scary. Because her reflected face was in a glare Milo never wanted to have facing him. She was silent, face getting steadily more annoyed. "But I have to- Can I just send him along after that, then." Her face seemed to lighten a bit. "Good. You no good s.o.b.-" She growled. "Oh yeah- sure. All you and your little friend have done is screw my life over, kisama." she shut off the phone with that.  
  
Milo watched as she shut the computer, stood up, and turned to face him. Looking rather annoyed, but subdued. "What's yer name?" she asked.  
  
"Milo Clapton."  
  
"Aubre Yuy."  
  
Yuy? Did she say Yuy as in Relina and Heero Yuy... or Yuy as in a reeeeally big coincidence? Milo stared now. "Yuy?" he asked. How could she be a Yuy? There was no Yuy child, was there?  
  
"Yeah, Yuy. You see, I have a wonderful doc-friend too," she pushed the laptop into his hands. "And everything was peachy until he led me to the Sanc mansion and to my family- See, years and years ago, there was a war- about the time you and I was just getting out of diapers, right?" He nodded. "And there were six children sent out into the world for their own safety: the children of the Gundam Pilots... I was one of them. And so are you."  
  
"Me? The son of a Gundam pilot? Are you kidding?"  
  
She smirked. "That's what I said. But it matches up. Does the name Tris mean anything to you?" she asked.  
  
"No. Not really. No." Milo replied. The name did sound familiar. But it didn't mean much to him.  
  
"Oh well, was worth a shot." she shrugged. "That's how I figured it out- that J wasn't lying. According to my father- uhhhhhhh, real father- I was really close to some kid named Tristan. Anyways, you are the son of Duo Maxwell, according to J. Wicked, huh?" she smirked again.  
  
"No. What are you talking about? My parents are at my house right now. I'm not adopted." he shook his head.  
  
Aubrie sighed and pressed a button on her cell phone again. "Hey, Dad!" she smirked. Silence. "It wasn't hard...But anyway, I need a shuttle or something.... Why? Because our good friend Dr. J and his little friends are being annoying.... Well, according to J, his name is Miles Maxwell...." She cocked an eyebrow. Giving an imaginary father figure a really weird look.  
  
Miles processed this slowly. He wasn't adopted. He'd lived here all his life. As long as he could remember... Unless they were lying to him. He never was too much like his family, but that could be coincidence...  
  
"No... Not really... Anyways! Dad, the kid needs a ride to Sanc- I've still got to explain to Jack why life sucks, alright! Send... send.... Send Cheng, or something. It's be the perfect welcome wagon- 'Welcome to the club- hands up, weakling, or I shoot!'... " She frowned. "You just have a dry sense of humor. C'mon, already, Heero!" It appeared to be he caved after that, because Aubrie grinned and shut off the phone. "Be here in an hour. Why don't you and I go ask your family a few inquiries..."  
  
Miles, numb with complete disbelief, lead the girl blindly to his home.  
  
Mom and Dad were in the living room watching the news. Aubrie stared at the report silently a moment. "Wow! Word gets out fast!" she said cheerfully. So cheerfully it was beyond measure. The report was about some big name in business getting shot and killed days before. There were no suspects.  
  
Milo's parent's jumped and turned. "New friend, Milo?" asked Mr. Clapton.  
  
Milo swallowed hard. If he was ever going to believe this, he would have to hear it from his parents. "Mom, Dad, was I adopted?"  
  
The nervous look the two shared answered his question. "Well. yes, Milo, you were."  
  
Milo swallowed again. Aubrie was shifting on her feet, checking her watch. "Miles' gotta go 'way." She said. "Back to his true parents."  
  
Mom and Dad and Milo were all staring at her like she was mad.  
  
"No kidding. You know the report you just watched? He's part of an organization trying to start another war. Miles' real parents were Gundam pilots- at least his father was. Miles' needed to help stop the war. Like me." She looked much more serious than she had ever looked to Milo. He almost felt grateful. But the confusion of the situation wasn't letting it though.  
  
"You can't take Milo! I don't care WHO'S parents gave him up! I raised him!" Mrs. Clapton shrieked.  
  
"They gave him up to save him!" Aubrie snapped. "The same reason my parents gave me up. Had we stayed, every assassin in the Unified Nation would be out for our heads. He's gotta go back. They need his help. And it's not up to you- It's up to him." And she turned to him, giving him an 'answer the question' look.  
  
Miles stared, completely out of phase with what was going on. Wait. What WAS going on? All he knew was ever since he had found that stupid computer, his life had turned upside down. Slowly, with everyone watching, it all started to process itself. ".How dangerous is the situation?" he asked after a moment.  
  
"You know the man on that report? He was the leader. The details you can get on the way to the base. But shortly put- the Preventers need pilots. And who better than the children of the Gundam pilots.. Look, if those doctors didn't think we could take our father's steps than they wouldn't have bothered with us. You'd still be in the illusion that these people are your true parents. And me. I'd be probably doing a show right now for my foster father." Aubrie rolled her eyes. "You make the decision. I'll be outside." And she walked out without a second glance.  
  
The illusion that these people are your true parents.. "You lied to me. All this time." Milo turned to his parents, who had stood up.  
  
"Believe us, Miles, had we thought that something like this would happen.. We didn't want you to go looking for your real parents and leaving us." his mother said quietly.  
  
"If you had been honest, I wouldn't have." Milo muttered venomously. He stalked out of the house. Aubrie was leaning against the porch banister as if she expected him all along. "Let's go." He mumbled.  
  
"Milo! Milo, wait!" his parents called. Milo ignored them.  
  
"Folks." Aubrie bowed and pranced after Milo. "You're going to the base. I'm going on to New York to have a chat similar to that to my foster father and grab some things and then come back to start the Preventer training."  
  
"Whatever." Milo muttered.  
  
Soon later he was on the plane and on his way to Sanc. He was met by a tall American with a braid. "Milo!" the man said cheerfully. Way more cheerfully than Milo could feel. "What's up, buddy?"  
  
"Don't talk like you know me, man." Miles muttered darkly.  
  
The man never faltered. "But I do know you. I'm yer dad, kid."  
  
Well, that just changed everything..  
  
Loki: Okay, people, if I don't get any reviews- good or bad, I'm not continuing this story- how about that? 


	3. The Rescue Mission

In The End Loki Weasley Part Three: The Rescue Mission  
  
Summary: War struck Peace with a wrath. Severing families- more particularly the ties of five certain Gundam pilots... Now, thirteen years after they sent their children to 'a better place', they find the very place those kids need to be is where they started in the first place. Funny how things work out...  
  
Loki: ::swaying back and forth:: My name is Lo-ki, Lo-ki, Lo-ki! My name is Loki and who are you? ::points at audience::  
  
Aubrie: My name is Au-brie, Au-brie, Au-brie! My name is Aubrie and who are you?  
  
Tattoos were another way to express art. That, and painful. Art or not, tattoos were painful. So, he skipped that idea. Instead, he settled for long, auburn hair tied back in a ponytail, his right ear pierced, and green eyes that everyone at his high school said were creepy. Whatever. He wasn't popular. Who wanted to be? An artist wasn't popular until after they were dead. Nobody would care what he was like until after he died. Or left the school. Cool. He wasn't much of a people person. Or a 'clean clothes' person. His clothes were stained with various shades of paint and his left hand always had pencil rubbings or something along the edge where it rested on the paper. There was no avoiding any of this. Plus it gave the students at his school something to talk about. 'Look at his clothes.' At least they were keeping busy. His name was Sketch, informally speaking. Formally, it was Tristan Kim, an adopted child by a Korean family. Strange, didn't it normally go the other way around? Amazing how things work out.  
  
"Little One." came Mom's voice from the hallway.  
  
"It's open." Tristan turned over and hid his face in his pillow, muttering into it about how it was an injustice to wake an artist so early in the morning. especially after an amazing inspiration about a child with blue eyes. The base sketch, later to be painted, lay on the floor. A little girl, one he often drew, was sitting in the lap of a gigantic rabbit stuffed animal. What it meant, he wasn't sure.  
  
"It's time to wake up, Tristan." his mother chided, sliding open the blinds. "Ahhhh!" Tristan shielded his face as torrential light poured into his room. Half-way to sitting up, the boy fell back onto his bed and groaned in agony. "Mooooooommmmaaaaaa. I'm blind now, are you happy?"  
  
"You're not blind, Tristan." his mother's voice came from somewhere in the darkness. "It's time to rise and shine!..."  
  
"It's time to get up and face the day." Tristan muttered along with her. "Become an individual in society."  
  
Mom wasn't entertained. "Oh, very funny. Get up. You have ten minutes." And she marched from the bedroom.  
  
Tristan rolled over and off his bed, landing with a nice thud, and sat there looking dazedly for his clothes. There were bluish jeans within arm's reach. ooh, and his purple tee shirt. ooh! And his favorite green plaid button up! Without having to move to far, the artist threw on his clothes and trudged sock-footed downstairs.  
  
Momma and Papa were both eating breakfast. Three children came screaming through the room by one door and out another. A fourth came later and Tristan grabbed that one, throwing the giggling child over his shoulder. "So, what do I get to choke down today?" he asked, grinning at a ten-year-old girl at the kitchen stove.  
  
"Shut up." The girl aimed precision spatula at him and Tristan ducked.  
  
"Tristan, don't make fun of your sister." Papa said automatically.  
  
"SueLynn, don't throw things at your brother." Said Momma automatically.  
  
Neither had looked up from what they had been doing.  
  
"Yes, ma'am." Came Suelynn's rehearsed reply, glaring at Tristan.  
  
"Yes, sir." Tristan replied solemnly, sticking his tongue out at his younger sister and depositing the child he had been holding on his lap. The little girl giggled again and reached futilely for a salt shaker in the middle of the table. The girl, three and short-armed, was in no immediate danger of swallowing a whole thing of salt so Tristan ignored her.  
  
"Where are you headed today, Tristan?" Momma asked.  
  
"I dunno." The boy shrugged, looking at the eggs his sister had put in front of him. He craned his neck over the table to see if his parents had eaten theirs. Then looked up at his sister. "Didn't poison these, did you?"  
  
"No more than usual." She shrugged and walked back into the kitchen.  
  
"Cool beans!" Tristan cried and dug in.  
  
That went pretty much ignored. But his little sister Cho started giggling again and yelling 'Cool beans' herself over and over. That too went pretty much ignored.  
  
After breakfast Tristan hopped (literally) up to his room and started to search his non-existent floor for his sketch pad and pencil.  
  
Ring.  
  
It sounded sort of like Mozart.  
  
Intrigued, and bewildered, Tristan started throwing things around his room in order to search for whatever it was making that noise. After about five minutes of some song in midi, Tristan shook out a sweatshirt half pink from a bad run in with his little siblings and a can of paint, and a small green phone fell onto his bed. Completely lost, Tristan pressed the answer button.  
  
"How interesting, you could have gone 'boom' and yet you answer. Tactless." The voice on the other end said. It was simulated. It was also annoying.  
  
"Excuse me?" Tristan asked, not even attempting the idea of standing up at the moment. He knelt somewhere near the middle of his room and stared at a sudden image of a pixilated man in a gym teacher's outfit. They image disturbing, he shook his head to clear it out.  
  
"I'm your new best friend, Tristan. Tell me, you do understand you are adopted, correct?"  
  
Tristan snorted. "Either that or an Albino Korean." He replied shortly.  
  
"Makes my life easy. Do you have interest in meeting your true parents, Tristan?"  
  
"Uh." Tristan stared out his window. The Kim's had always been his parents. Now that he thought about it, no, he didn't really. "Well, no, not really." He replied. "And who the heck are you?"  
  
"A friend, as I told you. What about saving the world." The voice pressed in a tantalizing sort of way.  
  
"What are you on?"  
  
"Right now the world is in great danger of war. And you, young one, are the son of a pilot who stopped the wars that resulted in the Earth's Sphere Unified Nation. Something to be proud of. Now, do you wish to help the effort and find the object of so many of your art inspirations?"  
  
"Wait- how did you know about my drawings? And IF I was said person's child, why was I given up?"  
  
"Life moves in mysterious ways. But if you are interested. Go to the palace and ask for a man named Trowa Barton. Press redial on this phone and give it to him. Understand?"  
  
"Chhh." Replied Tristan and he turned the phone off. This dude was nuts.  
  
The rest of the day went uneventful. Tristan headed to the park to doodle the tree line. It was a beautiful day. Spring was coming. The only problem was Charli and her gang of blondes showed up.  
  
Not that Charli wasn't pretty, but you know.  
  
Tristan fought off the urge to go ga-ga as the 'popular girl's' walked by with Charli in the lead, giving him a disapproving look. So what if she hated him? She was cute.  
  
After that, the thoughts of the little girl came back again. And then the words of the person on the phone.  
  
Tristan could figure he would probably regret this, but..  
  
"And you want to speak to Commander Barton why?" asked the girl behind the receptionist's desk at the palace. She gave him a strange look. It sort of said 'I hate teenagers' in a secretary sort of way. Her horn- rimmed glasses slipped down her nose.  
  
"Because. I'm doing a report. in school. And I heard he was one of the high Preventers and I wanted. his. point of view." Tristan was so bad at lying. He smiled innocently (he hoped) and waited while she processed his request, all the while glaring at him.  
  
She picked up the phone. Uh oh. "Commander? Yes, there's a boy who wishes to interview you for some school thing, should I send him up?" Silence. Tristan, still marveling that his lie worked, just stared in awe. "Yes, sir." She hung up and glared again at Tristan. "Hang on, someone will come get you. Sit over there." And she pointed to a chair in the corner far away from her.  
  
Oh well. It worked! Tristan, the worst liar in the world, had just gotten the secretary to let him see this Trowa Barton! Yay! Go him!  
  
Wait a minute! He wasn't even sure he wanted to go through with the simulated voice's instructions! But still! He got away with a lie!  
  
Although, sitting bored for five minutes was a down side, too, but still! He lied! And it worked! He got away with it!  
  
.Wait. He shouldn't be proud of that. Anyway.  
  
"Yo. You must be 'the kid Commander Barton is being interviewed by'." Some kid with blue hair no older than him said. He grinned at Tristan and gestured to an elevator. "C'mon."  
  
"Kay." Tristan replied.  
  
The boy, Milo he called himself, shifted as they stood alone in the elevator. Tristan turned everything over in his mind for a few moments before Milo's voice interrupted. "You're not here for an interview, are you?" he asked cautiously. As if he was afraid to ask. Milo led him down a hall that looked no different from that of a museum.  
  
"No." Tristan asked, walking into the open office and pulling the phone from his pocket. He pressed redial as told and slid it across the desk. "There. Now what?" he dropped into a chair and folded his arms on the desk, sighing and leaning his chin on them.  
  
Trowa listened emotionlessly to the phone until the end. He looked mildly surprised, rather amused, and turned off the phone. He slid it back to Tristan. "Keep it. My name is Trowa Barton only by the fact I had no name growing up. You were led here by a simulated voice on the other end of a phone because the Doctors that trained the Gundam pilots feel the best remedy for an upcoming war is their children. You, Tristan." He said. Tristan met his eyes and it all clicked. Ahhhhhh.  
  
"But I'm not so sure about this 'real family' thing yet, o' true father of mine." he muttered, staring back. The truth came as blow, yes, and as some sort of uplift, but it was still the fact he was facing a man he didn't know.  
  
"Neither is Miles, the boy you just met, or Aubrie, who is in New York at the moment working out details. And it only matters that you want to help. The peace you live in is in danger." Trowa stood up and walked over to Tristan, watching him from his tall height. Tristan, who hadn't moved save his eyes, stared up at him. "Your mother will. be.very interested in your return. Though that in itself is a health hazard." Trowa cleared his throat. "She's been waiting for this since Aubrie was captured and found out."  
  
"Captured?" Tristan asked, standing up and finding out where he got his height from.  
  
"She's been following the orders of the simulated voice for a long time. Follow me." Trowa headed out of his office and Tristan followed because he figured he might as well. "I was told you most likely came here to find the object of what you draw. Not because you wanted to find us or help with the effort."  
  
"Yeah. pretty much. Although, now that I'm here, those other ideas sound interesting too." Tristan shrugged. No sense lying, he was terrible at it anyway.  
  
A smile played Trowa's face. "At least you're honest with it." Trowa nodded to a Monet on the wall. It was wonderful. "Your mother, Middi, recreated that. If you want to go home to explain what's going on to them."  
  
"I was adopted by a Korean family here in Sanc-"  
  
"Here? You've been here all this time?" Trowa looked interestingly surprised. Funny, when Tristan first saw him it looked like nothing got to this guy.  
  
"Well. No. We moved her when I was ten. I've also got five siblings, too, that I'm leaving behind. But, you know, this whole save the world thing sounds more important."  
  
Attention Special Forces, report to the Conference Room immediately! Came a very irritable voice from above. Tristan was staring at the intercom when his father started to run down the hall tossing 'Follow me' over his shoulder. Tristan took after him.  
  
"What's going on?" Tristan asked, easily keeping up with the long strides of Trowa Barton.  
  
"Probably has something to do with you." Said Trowa, leading Tristan to a hallway and down four flights of stairs. He passed a guarded station, having to glare at the guards who tried to stop Tristan and tell them to let him through, and then through a few other, automated, check stations before coming to the Conference Room.  
  
The room was boring, Tristan thought to himself. It was primarily white, with a few accents in hopes to make it look interesting. The table in the room was round, much like King Arthur's, and there was a wall-sized screen in the front of the room in front of which a woman was pacing back and forth. Two men and Milo were sitting in chairs, looking bothered.  
  
"Who's that?" the woman demanded of Trowa.  
  
"My name's Tristan." Tristan cut in, rather annoyed the woman asked Trowa and not him, as if he had no say. Which he didn't in terms of being in this room, but anyway.  
  
"Another lead by the Doctors, Noin." Trowa said, sitting down across from Heero Yuy.  
  
"So why are WE here, again?" Milo asked impatiently, nodding to Tristan and himself.  
  
A Chinese man and two blondes (walk into a bar. sorry, ahem. I'll continue now.) came into the room, all asked the same question about Tristan, heard the answer, and too seats.  
  
"Heero was playing around with your computer that the doctor gave you, Milo." The man with the braid said. His badge read Maxwell.  
  
"And this showed up." Noin tapped away at the computer at the head of the round table, at least the part closest to the screen, and an image showed.  
  
A little pixel doctor that looked as though something had exploded on his head and the mushroom cloud was still hanging around.  
  
Tristan stared. Wow, if his simulated voice person turned out to look like that, he'd run for the hills. That, or start laughing and never be able to stop.  
  
"Before the little lamb could be led back to Bo Peep, the big bad wolf came along." Milo snorted with laughter. Heero Yuy reached over and smacked him upside the head. Maxwell started laughing too. "The Nightingale's busy in New York."  
  
"This dude's nuts." Tristan muttered under his breath.  
  
"But a genius." Trowa muttered himself.  
  
"Riiiight."  
  
"So that leaves the two little boys to rescue Bo Peep's lost little lamb."  
  
"Is he going to get on with it?" the Chinese man demanded. His badge read Cheng.  
  
Noin cleared her throat. "Basically, what he is saying is that one of the daughters has been taken prisoner by Seraphim, although we don't know why. It's either Katrina or JieLan, considering he openly said Aubrie was still in New York." Noin snapped at him.  
  
Cheng folded his arms. "Katrina."  
  
"What makes you so sure?" the man with long blonde hair asked. Marquis.  
  
"Because no child of mine's going to get herself captured like some weakling."  
  
Milo leaned closer to Maxwell. "S'he on something?"  
  
"No, he's just very justificated." Maxwell replied, making a pouty face at Cheng. "In't that right, Wu-Wu?"  
  
Cheng made a move to jump on Maxwell, but the man with the short blonde hair (Winner) grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back into his seat.  
  
"What we need to do," Noin was acting as if none of this was even happening, "is put these two through basic-basic training and send them along with one of you to find her. The message said she hadn't left the country she's been living in all these years. Which means she's in a base in England. somewhere." Noin cleared her throat. "We only know of this base, here, which is in Edinburgh." A map replaced the pixel man and Edinburgh showed up with the location of a 'base' on it.  
  
"After that, we'll deal with Aubrie. She's the only one with training for this sort of thing. Plus she knows more than she's letting on." Heero said to Noin.  
  
"What gives you that idea?" Cheng snorted.  
  
"Because she infiltrated the Seraphim and killed their leader. She knows more than she's letting on if she hasn't told us anything beyond that and Jacobs." Heero shot back. 


	4. The Shotty Rescue

In The End Loki Weasley Part Four: The Shotty Rescue  
  
Summary: War struck Peace with a wrath. Severing families- more particularly the ties of five certain Gundam pilots... Now, thirteen years after they sent their children to 'a better place', they find the very place those kids need to be is where they started in the first place. Funny how things work out...  
  
Loki: No comments!! YAY!!  
  
Picture your idea of a British person. Polyester clothes and slick hair, right? Well, she wasn't your usual British person. She wore a Mandarin collar dress that looked like patchwork with one end of the skirt ending closer to her feet than the other over a black leather jacket and high heels. Her hair, straight black with red ends, hung down and normally over her blue eyes. She didn't have tattoos, but a good number of earrings and even a nose ring, and her eyes held contacts that looked like cat's gold eyes and even reflected light. It creeped her step-mother out. Good. She didn't like her step-mother. Or her mother, for that matter. Or her father. Or her step-father. Face it, she didn't like her family. And with good reason. They all still had yet to inform her she had been adopted. Well, wait, she knew, yes, but she wanted them to come out with it already and tell her face to face instead of hiding behind 'Oh, honey, you look just like your grandmother!' Oh, by the way, she didn't have a nickname. She was just called JieLan. Her 'parents' said they named her that because it wasn't quite Mulan and it had Jay, like a Blue Jay. Silly liars.  
  
JieLan started her day by sneaking out of her house and going to the town to walk around and wait for something to find. The UK wasn't her home. She knew very well it wasn't. She didn't belong here. She belonged. who knew where.  
  
Silly people started to run around the streets, enjoying their life. Making fools of themselves. JieLan sighed at the silly people and kept going. More people started to run.  
  
Screaming.  
  
What on Earth? JieLan was nearly knocked over by a football player from her school as she fought her way up to where all the commotion was coming from.  
  
Men in silly uniforms. With guns.  
  
Ooooookaaaaaaaay...  
  
JieLan watched as the people ran from the intersection and the men with guns fanned out. She slipped into the shadows of an alley between two stores and waited. Stupid men. She frowned and leaned up against the wall. The first man walked by her alley and JieLan kicked up as he peeked in. Caught his jaw and everything! JieLan, now pleased to see the man fall down some ten feet from where he stood, prepared for the rest of the men in silly uniforms to come running to that one's aid.  
  
The first one went down as easy as the first. The second one put a hole in her jacket with his knife. The third went down and took two others with him. The sixth one was the smart one. He held up his gun at her head. His still standing friends did the same.  
  
Dang.  
  
JieLan glared at the obvious leader Silly Man Number Six and went with them quietly. They packed her off in some black van with a blindfold, apparently going for the stereotypical kidnaps, and drove for a few hours or so. JieLan was about to fall asleep from boredom when they hauled her to her feet and practically dragged her through some hallways and corridors that she couldn't see. She did, though, count all her steps and turns when and where. Right.. Left... Elevator ride for three dings.down.. Right.. Into a room, door slams shut. About five hundred steps. Easy enough. JieLan repeated the numbers in her head a few hundred times, being she had nothing else to do, and took off her blindfold. Not that it made much difference in such a dark room.  
  
Bored again, JieLan waited. Either they would take her out of she would go nuts. Whichever, she didn't care. It wasn't exactly like her parents would miss her or anything.  
  
Three days went by, if they were giving her three meals a day. JieLan finally got too bored and when the next meal came, made her move.  
  
The Silly Men had to open the door to feed her, right? So.. JieLan waited patiently while they fiddled with the door and finally swung it open. Then swung her foot from her place just besides it. The tray went flying into his face and he fell back. JieLan jumped over the Silly Man and ducked out of sight when more Silly Men came running to see what the big crash was. Then she proceeded to retrace her steps.  
  
That was, until the men figured out she wasn't some simpering little weakling and blocked her off just as she was about to turn the second to last corner. Two Silly Men with guns smiled at their triumph. JieLan glared and slowly raised her hands. A metal stick came from around the corner and caught the two men in the backs of their heads. They fell, unconscious. JieLan stepped to the side of the one further from where the pole had originated from and stared down at his face. Yep, he was out for a while. She turned her head to see a Chinese man holding the very pole used to knock out those men. He didn't look too happy.  
  
"Oh, my hero." JieLan smiled in her thick British accent, eyeing his uniform. "What made you think I needed a rescue?"  
  
"Those guns, child. Now stop running your mouth and follow me." He turned around and stalked off.  
  
Two boys no older than her were standing some feet away in similar uniforms to what the Chinese man wore. When the man stalked by they gave him plenty of room and then smiled at her.  
  
"My name's Milo." Said the boy with the blue hair.  
  
"Looks like we were made to come here for no reason." Said the other boy as JieLan started after the Chinese man. He was going her way, so she might as well follow at a distance. "My name's Tristan."  
  
"JieLan."  
  
The Chinese man swore. But there was nothing wrong and he went on muttering something about injustice under his breath as he stalked from the halls and out of the base.  
  
"That's Wufei. He's um.. Rather disappointed." Tristan informed her.  
  
"Hn. What's his problem?"  
  
"He thought you were someone else. See, he didn't want it to be his daughter who got caught by Seraphim."  
  
JieLan stopped walking. "Daughter. That's my father?"  
  
Wufei also stopped; he walked over to JieLan and loomed over her. JieLan studied him a moment. Then shrugged. "Explains a few things. Where to?" she asked.  
  
Wufei smirked. "At least you're not as annoying as Yuy's child. Bouncing around with that stupid grin." He turned and walked this time at the same pace as JieLan.  
  
"Yuy as in Aubrie, right?" Milo asked. "She's suicidal. You know, she taunted those dudes with the really big guns when I fell into that base?" he muttered, putting his hands behind his head.  
  
"You were saved by a girl?" JieLan gathered. Milo nodded. JieLan laughed. "Pansy."  
  
"Am not!"  
  
"Are too!"  
  
"You are too, if some deranged child had to keep you alive." Wufei snapped, ending the argument.  
  
"Is it just me, or aren't parents NOT supposed to teach their kids things like that?" Milo whined to Tristan, who seemed to be the only one who cared. But Tristan just smirked and shrugged.  
  
"I have five siblings and I never had problems like this." He said.  
  
"You know what!..." Milo began, sticking his finger at Tristan and looking as though he was going to say something. JieLan watched as Milo couldn't think of anything to say, shut his mouth, and trudged ahead.  
  
"I won't have to spend much time with him, will I?" she asked her father.  
  
"Unfortunetly." Wufei sighed.  
  
"Dang."  
  
"I heard that." Milo called over his shoulder.  
  
Sanc was everything the travel guides made it out to be, JieLan reasoned as she walked into the Preventer half of the castle. And not made to be, thinking about it. JieLan smirked as a woman with her eyes caught sight of her.  
  
"JieLan?" she asked quietly.  
  
JieLan smiled and nodded. "Finally, someone who'll appreciate me!" she said simply and accepted her mother's hug openly.  
  
"Guess your thought that it was Kat was wrong, 'Fei." Her mother said laughingly.  
  
"Shut up, woman." Wufei growled.  
  
Her mother laughed. "I believe you can find Duo in the cafeteria eating. And the money you owe is on the nightstand- don't look at me like that- I know where you sleep." She warned. Wufei, who looked like he was going to yell something mean, shut his mouth and stalked off, again muttering to himself about the injustices of a wife.  
  
JieLan smiled. "I like him. Aside from the whole woman thing we agree."  
  
Her mother's smile twitched. "Yes, I'm still working on that. ahem. detail. Hungry?"  
  
"Terribly! Those Silly Men have only given me gruel the past three days!" JieLan cried. "The injustices of prisoner treatment!"  
  
"Yes, you are like your father." her mother grinned and led JieLan to the cafeteria.  
  
They enter to find an interesting scene.  
  
A man with a braid was lying on the floor of the large room, pleading with her father to not kill him. Her father was leaning over the braided man with a katana to his throat, growling something at him in Chinese, which she didn't know save a few catch phrases.  
  
But 'I'll kill you' popped up so she figured her father was angry. She smirked and her mother sighed. The man with a braid noticed her.  
  
By now the final Preventer had made their way from the room in a hurry.  
  
"Sally! Call him off, please!! Puh-lease!!?" the man with the braid whined.  
  
"What'd you do, Duo?" her mother asked.  
  
"Uhhhh.." Duo hesitated.  
  
Her mother smirked. "Well?"  
  
"All I did was wonder how the Great Shenlong's daughter got captured when Heero's girl couldn't!" he was near tears, this Duo. "Call him off, please!"  
  
"What do you think?" Sally turned to her daughter thoughtfully.  
  
"He was making fun of me, right?" JieLan asked. Sally nodded. JieLan turned back to her father, whose grip had loosened and Duo was scrambling to his feet and for the door. "Have fun." She waved and headed to the line.  
  
Wufei bowed to his daughter before taking off after Duo, who was screaming 'This is an injustice' as he disappeared down the hall and out of sight.  
  
Sally and JieLan laughed.  
  
After lunch picking up lunch, which left no spare tray left, JieLan sat with her mother catching up. "Ooh, pity it wasn't mine, after all. Though I would have been disappointed if she were that much like her father," cooed a voice.  
  
"Hi, Dorothy. JieLan, this is 'the other girl's' mother." Sally said, motioning for the tall, blonde, and weird-eye browed woman to join them.  
  
"Wufei has Duo's braid and is threatening to cut it off. Or so it was when a passed a minute ago. And Duo's screaming about how an injustice Miss JieLan is." Dorothy said.  
  
JieLan smirked through her fruit salad. "Good."  
  
"The only injustice about it is the fact she didn't take his side." Sally giggled. "But Wufei won't hurt him."  
  
"Nah, after he almost killed Duo and Hilde exacted revenge. Well." Dorothy smiled widely. "I still have pictures."  
  
"And I don't?" Sally asked, laughing hysterically.  
  
"What happened?" JieLan asked, now sipping tea.  
  
Sally sighed happily. "Your father did very much what he was doing earlier. And accidentally ran Duo through. He was in the hospital for a while- I would know, I'm the one who put him back together- and Hilde nearly killed Wufei. He still winces at the sight of vases." all three females then started laughing hysterically again.  
  
Wufei stalked into the cafeteria some ten minutes later, looking harassed, and sat down next to JieLan, across from Dorothy. "Hilde caught me." He muttered in explanation.  
  
Even if she had no idea who Hilde was, JieLan started cracking up all over again. Wufei snorted at the women and asked why he bothered coming in the cafeteria in the first place.  
  
Duo, Hilde, and Milo came in some ten minutes later. Milo waved to JieLan and the three sat far from the four currently in the room. And with good reason, because JieLan spotted her father glaring at Duo periodically while he ignored the smirks from the three women and talked Britain over with JieLan.  
  
The next day, JieLan got to take the magical trip to the 'Conference Room' where the object of Aubrie was discussed.  
  
"She's been gone too long." Heero Yuy said.  
  
"Sure it's not separation anxiety?" Duo cooed.  
  
Heero pulled out a gun and pointed it at Duo. "She's the only one with sufficient training- the only one who knows how to properly use a gun." He said, glancing at JieLan. She smirked. He had heard about her half-way escape/rescue!  
  
"So we go get her, then." Milo offered, yanking Heero's arm from the direction of his father's head. "She's just talking this over with her foster father, right?"  
  
"Yes." 


	5. Jackie Chan

In The End Loki Weasley Part Five: Jackie Chan  
  
Summary: War struck Peace with a wrath. Severing families- more particularly the ties of five certain Gundam pilots... Now, thirteen years after they sent their children to 'a better place', they find the very place those kids need to be is where they started in the first place. Funny how things work out...  
  
Loki: BLUDGER, HO!!! EEEEEK!!! ::runs away from black ball::  
  
New York was simply New York, and to it its own. The male resident of New York City shoved his hands in his baggy red pants and whistled as he headed down the road. Three kids he had never seen, all his age, were ahead. He had a tattoo, a simple little scythe on his shoulder, and wore white dress shirt left open over it. His hair was black but long and in a braid. A lot of people commented he looked like a girl and was gay. Well, they were three-quarters right. Bi was close enough. Solo kept walking along towards the Cauldron where his boy- yes, boy- friend worked. The three teens in front of him were bickering. At least the girl and the boy with short blue hair. The boy of the subject was named Solo, plain and simple.  
  
". I mean, really, you were saved by a girl, Miles," the girl had an English accent. "That just proves my theory." She flipped her long black and red hair, smiling at the boy beside her.  
  
"And what's that?" the blue-haired boy, Milo, growled. He didn't seem to want to know the answer, Solo smirked to himself. He was only walking into anyway, he figured.  
  
"That boys, no offense, Tristan, are weaklings."  
  
The boy with the brown hair just shrugged.  
  
"You know, your dad has completely different-" Milo started.  
  
"EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEK!!!" screamed an all too familiar voice to Solo. He turned at the same time the teens in front of him did. From about a half mile down the road a green-garbed girl tore around a corner. She nearly fell as she skidded to the turn and ran towards them. This, Solo knew, was Nightingale after she again made some stupid mistake. He watched in amusement as Mrs. Tskishiro, an old woman who owned an herbal remedy shop around the corner, came tearing after Nightingale with a broom. Nothing new, but entertaining all the same. Everyone ignored this except for Solo, tourists, and those three teenagers.  
  
Mrs. T was screaming in Little-Toyko-ese, which was a mixture of different languages from neighboring 'Little' places, and Nightingale was screaming for someone to stop the mad woman and wailing at the top of her lungs.  
  
All this, of course, was pretty much ignored.  
  
"Don't tell me," came the girl's voice, "That that is the girl who saved your arse?"  
  
"Okay. I won't." said Milo.  
  
The girl and the other boy started to laugh.  
  
"Look! I TOLD you she was completely mental!" Milo cried in frustration. Solo giggled. People were interesting sometimes.  
  
By now Nightingale had passed them and a man came running from the convenience store nearby. "Robbery!" screamed a voice.  
  
As if some invisible switch was flipped, Nightingale stopped screaming and picked up speed. Solo loved watching her gears work. She was so strange. It was interesting to watch. Nightingale jumped over the man that had stolen something, turned around, and karate kicked him in the stomach. He flew back a good few feet and Nightingale watched as the man didn't get up for a few minutes.  
  
Solo grinned wide when Mrs. T smacked Nightingale with her broom after the man finally got up, dropped what he stole, and ran like a bat out of Hell. Nightingale sat on the ground and started wailing again. Mrs. T walked away telling her it was for her own good.  
  
"Man, I feel really lame right now." Milo muttered from ahead of Solo.  
  
"Oy! G! You'll be late!" Solo yelled as he started off again.  
  
Nightingale stared at him a second, puzzled. Processing what he had said. She glanced at her watch. Then shrieked. "DAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMIIIIIIIIT!!" she cried and took off again.  
  
Solo smirked. "What an interesting girl." he mused as he headed to the Cauldron again.  
  
Those three kids showed up at the bar, Solo noticed as he helped his boyfriend set up the stage. Ripper, named that because of all the rips he made in his attire, assisted in loading a new amp onto the stage since the last on broke down the other night. "G get here on time?" he asked.  
  
"Of course not." Ripper replied with a laugh.  
  
"Oh, let's just make fun of the bird!" Nightingale muttered from where she sat at the back of the stage by Jamie, a large black guy around twenty, and discussed the list that evening.  
  
"Tweet, tweet." Replied Solo sweetly.  
  
Nightingale snorted. "Go make out with Ripper, already, will you?" she asked.  
  
"Not until after the show, love." Solo added to Ripper, who pretended to pout.  
  
"I hate you." Nightingale hissed at Solo deathly quiet.  
  
"I know!" Solo smirked and jumped down to sit in one of the front seats.  
  
It wasn't too far from those kids. Again, the girl and the kid called Milo were arguing and the kid called Tristan was bent over a piece of paper. Solo craned his neck and saw him drawing an amazingly accurate picture of Nightingale. The kid pulled another piece of paper from his back pocket, smoothed out the picture of a little girl, and smirked. "Perfect match." He said.  
  
"Huh?" the clueless Milo asked.  
  
"I just figured out why I'm infatuated with drawing this little girl." Tristan said, tapping the color pencil sketch with his mechanical pencil.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Because she's her." And he pointed to Nightingale, who was tuning her guitar and paying no attention to anyone around her.  
  
"Mind you, she's completely unstable." Milo replied matter-of-factly.  
  
"But cute."  
  
"But still completely nuts."  
  
Solo blocked out the argument as the room got dark suddenly. It was silent and pitch black a moment, and then snapping noises came from the stage. Then snapping and stomping. Ahhh. Solo sat back. He liked this song.  
  
"Mr. Luva. Mr. Luva. Mr. Luva." with these three phrases the lights on the stage came on and Jamie was performing. Standing back at the board while G; Jade, a tiny little Chinese girl; Big Mamma a relatively normal- sized Haitian woman of twenty-one; and Squeaks, a white girl who didn't squeak at all, stood in front and danced while chanting background melody.  
  
After that came some Billy Idol and Papa Roach and even Prince (ala Ripper! Yay!) and then what made Nightingale so famous: Michael Jackson's Scream with her as Mike and Jade as Janet. The show went on and on and Solo went through two pints of Ben and Jerry's.  
  
The hairs on the back of his head started to tingle. He turned around, but there was no one there watching him. Wary, he turned back around just as Nightingale jumped onto his table in the middle of going about how she doesn't give a damn about her bad reputation and crouched over him. She smiled evilly, obviously wanting to do something mean, but moved on towards the back of the room. She always did this during shows. It was only really interesting when she flipped and made stupid acts that could get her neck broken.  
  
The show was the same as usual, and everybody loved it, and when it ended Solo stood and disappeared into the kitchens to help clean up. Ripper came in and helped a few minutes in, and when the door opened Solo spotted Nightingale talking to those three teenagers he had seen most of his day. She looked rather serious and out of character. not that her character was ever stable or predictable.  
  
"Interested?" Ripper's voice cut in. Solo jumped.  
  
"No. No, of course not." Solo muttered, going slightly red as the last worker left him and Ripper alone in the kitchens. "That kid, though, looks familiar." He jerked his thumb at the middle kid.  
  
Ripper walked over to the door and watched. "G's gone stiff? But that kid looks cute. You know the one that looks 'familiar'" Ripper made quotations with his fingers as he walked back over to Solo and grinned.  
  
"Oh, funny." Solo replied dryly. He took Ripper's hand, checked for spies, and ducked out the back door.  
  
Over in the bar, it was empty save Nightingale, Milo, JieLan, and Tristan. She came to the table and sat in a chair backwards.  
  
"So my father's finally sent the cavalry? I'm on a mission here. J said there may be Seraphim in the city." She said, scanning the small crowd. Her eyes met Tristan's and she stared. He smiled. She smiled back. "So you're the kid my dad was talking about." He nodded. Nightingale scanned the room. Someone was coming in. But.  
  
"What?" JieLan asked.  
  
"Shimatta." Was the reply. "Uhm, kitchens are empty- now." Aubrie was on her feet and pulling the nearest person towards the swinging doors, who happened to be Tristan. "My mission's just solved itself."  
  
Shutting them in, Aubrie waited with her fingers to her lips and glared at anyone who made any noise: which was Milo, who had tripped over his own two feet. She took a step back so she was clearly visible through the small round window on the door just as a soldier walked through. She kicked up, and he went flying. "WOO! Jackie Chan, The Bird be your successor!"  
  
"Not even, Yuy!" JieLan challenged.  
  
The two girls glared at one another.  
  
"Can we do the Xena War later?" Milo whined as ten soldiers came running into the room.  
  
He had spoken a little too soon, since the nearest soldier decked him and Milo suddenly found himself on his back in the alley because he went through the back door. Milo groaned.  
  
Solo stepped away from Ripper when something came flying out of the club's kitchen and landing on its back. He stared. Ripper shrugged at him. It was that boy the Chinese girl called Milo. The boy groaned and rolled onto his back.  
  
"You okay?" Solo asked curiously.  
  
Milo met his eyes and for the first time Solo got a really good look at this kid. Milo's face was just like his. Milo screamed and Solo took a few steps back in confusion.  
  
"I was wondering why Milo looked so familiar when I first saw him." Aubrie was standing at the doorway, her hand on the frame, smiling at them. "Solo, meet Milo. Milo, Solo." Aubrie smirked again then looked down the alleyway. "UhhhhhhAHHHHhhhhhh, inside, inside!" she said and pulled Ripper into the kitchen by his shirt collar.  
  
Solo followed her gaze and saw men in strange uniforms heading their way. Ohhhhkay. Probably better to do as the Crazy Girl said. Solo pulled Milo to his feet and ran past Nightingale, and stood by the Chinese girl whose shirt was ripped and she was holding a frying pan. There were more uniformed men scattered, unconscious, about the kitchen. "Do I want to know?" Solo asked curiously.  
  
Nightingale was leaning against the doorframe fishing something from her coat. A pistol. And then a cell phone. She stared at the phone, pushing a button. After a few seconds she put it to her ear. "The cavalry requires cavalry. Thanks for your trust in my returning, by the way." She glanced around the door and motioned the group to back up and took a few steps back herself. She sighed. "Yell at Jie." She replied to the phone and tossed it at the Chinese girl. "Stay in here." She ordered Solo and the rest of the mildly confused group. The Chinese girl, Jie, had taken to explaining what was going on to whoever was on the other side of the phone.  
  
Nightingale ran out the door, shutting it behind her.  
  
Solo turned to the group. "So.what's going on?" he asked.  
  
The Chinese girl was listening to the phone. "You mean there's TWO of them!?!" she demanded angrily. She snorted and hung up as gunfire filled the outside. "Miles, meet your brother, Solo. Solo, you know you're adopted, right?" Solo nodded, still not getting the brother part. "Okay, you're really Solo Maxwell. And this is your." she shuddered. "Twin.. Miles."  
  
Twin? Well, they were on the same plane, Solo reasoned, since he and Miles seemed to possess the same look of utter confusion.  
  
"You know, I see it." Ripper smirked. "So what's the big deal?"  
  
"You have to come to Sanc with us, Solo, you're the son of Duo Maxwell, the Gundam pilot, and you are needed to stop a war- it's why Yuy's out there now." Jie nodded her head to the alley, where the gunfire suddenly got entirely too fierce and then died.  
  
Solo stared as the door opened, Jie beside him tensed, but Nightingale, holding a bleeding arm, came in smiling. Two Preventers followed her in. "Nifty, huh?" Nightingale asked. She took her hand off her arm and stared at the blood running down it.  
  
Tristan gagged and turned away. "I hate blood." he muttered quietly.  
  
Nightingale frowned. "It's just a flesh wound.Ow," she groaned, taking a dish towel from a cabinet and wrapping it tightly around her upper arm.  
  
"Your friend J called your father and informed him that this guy here is Solo Maxwell." Jie informed Nightingale, going over to one of the unconscious men and kicking him lightly. "So what do we do with these guys?"  
  
"We'll make sure they're on the first flight to the base," replied the female Preventer.  
  
"Mm." Nightingale winced as she started bending her arm. "I hate J. But my mission's over so I s'pose we all're getting the first flight to Sanc, huh?" She walked over to Tristan. "Are you okay?"  
  
Tristan, who looked rather pale, nodded without looking at her. "I.I just had a really bad experience involving." he swallowed hard, "Involving blood.. I'll be fine, really." Although the lack of color in his face didn't exactly help the idea, Nightingale nodded slowly and turned back to the rest of the group. "Okay, then, these two Preventers're getting us a shuttle straight to Sanc, and I. I am going to kill J should I ever see him." She walked back out into the alleyway, only pausing to tell Ripper to inform Jack she said 'later', and disappeared. JieLan and Tristan followed after the two Preventers lacking names for the moment. Solo stood where he was. Milo had gone to the door, but stood waiting.  
  
"Go on, Soul." Ripper muttered in his ear. He smiled. "Just don' t ruin that body of yours, kay?"  
  
"Are you sure-"  
  
"You deserve a chance to know your family. Go on." Ripper walked into the club and towards the connection from the club to the apartment Jack and Nightingale resided in.  
  
"Coming?" Milo asked. He glanced down the alley. "They're waiting."  
  
"Yeah." Solo muttered, following his new-found brother from the room.  
  
"I met Mom and Dad. Dad's kinda strange. And Mom about killed me when she hugged me. But it's. I dunno. really cool to actually know who you belong to." Milo said in a museful tone. He glanced at Solo.  
  
"Everything I've known. Phht! Out the window.. Well, maybe something down the line will explain G up there." Solo smirked.  
  
Solo came to find that Milo was right. Duo Maxwell, his new-found father, acted like child and way beyond happy, while his mother grabbed both him and Milo at the same time so their heads smashed together. 


End file.
